KDE 4 Preview

KDE 4, first announced two years ago, is the next step for the popular
UNIX desktop environment. With the shift to a new major version of
the toolkit used to build KDE, developers are able to break free of
requirements for compatibility and make radical changes to the codebase.

Qt 4

Qt 4 is a library for building user interfaces in C++. It
provides most of the graphical elements of KDE applications.

Qt 4 heralds vastly better memory efficiency and a new painting system
that is able to leverage new advances in X.org for previously unseen
levels of eye candy. It also provides, for the first time, a GPL'd version
of the library on Apple's OS X and Microsoft's Windows, making porting
KDE applications to other platforms a possibility.

Plasma

The default desktop infrastructure, well remembered as operating
on similar lines since KDE 2, is being completely redesigned. The new
desktop shell, Plasma, promises to re-invent the desktop paradigm. Headed
by Aaron Siego, Plasma's team of developers has been working on a
complete replacement for the previous infrastructure of the KDE panel
and desktop, and the results are breathtaking.

Plasma incorporates most of what is seen on screen at first login. It is
a flexible, fully scalable and rotatable desktop shell with the ability
to embed mini-applications and media as applets or widgets known as
plasmoids. The concept of applets is not a new one to desktop design,
but Plasma brings a few innovations to the table.

Figure 1. Plasma, Showing Some of the Included Plasmoids

Plasma divorces the data engine from the presentation, allowing developers
to write a data engine once and then present this in an arbitrary number
of ways in an applet. For example, once an engine to extract system
performance state has been written, multiple plasmoids can present this
information in different ways. A desktop plasmoid might have a large,
detail-rich display, but the same data displayed on the panel might
recognise its spatial constraints and display a simpler view.

Native Plasma applets can be implemented as containments, which are simply
applets that can contain another applet. The panel is a containment,
as is the desktop itself, and an applet contained within the panel can
be dragged to the desktop or another panel, and vice versa, reforming
and reflowing itself to fit its physical constraints.

This flexibility opens up, among other possibilities, the ability for
scalable displays to enable a content-rich desktop on a PC or a display
that's more suited to low-screen resolutions on an embedded device. KDE 4.1
plans to support OS
X dashboard widgets, hinging on
new features in a release of WebKit scheduled for early 2008.

Oxygen

Oxygen is the name chosen for the cohesive look and feel for the new KDE
desktop. As well as creating beauty, the Oxygen team of artists
is working with user interface guidelines to ensure that identification
of elements is a priority. The result is a clean break from the previous
KDE style, obviously inspired in part by already-existing artwork, but
bringing it together with something fresh that is distinctly Oxygen's
own. Oxygen also incorporates the system sound package, combining with
the rest of the artwork to create something that is uniquely KDE.

Figure 2. The Oxygen Icon Set

With a team of three core icon designers, Oxygen relies on a set of strict
style guidelines and an official colour palette to ensure a consistent
result. The colours chosen are rich without being overpowering, and the
icon design is modern and appealing.

An advantage of the new Oxygen icon theme is that it will be the first
truly open KDE icon theme. The previous default for the long-running
KDE 3 series, Crystal, never had its sources made available. The Oxygen
team has been working exclusively in SVG, ensuring the set remains open.

The Oxygen style and window decoration is a large-scale departure from
the Plastik style that became default in the late 3.x series. The muted
pale gray and blue colours have made way for a brilliant off-white for
both window decoration and controls. Green, orange and blue highlights
are used sparingly with pleasing effect. The result looks extremely
clean and modern, although such a large departure no doubt will draw
some criticism. A wide range of colour schemes are available to suit
almost every taste.

Figure 3. Oxygen uses bold highlights with low-contrast widgets to achieve
a clean and modern look.

One minor concern about the new style is how much screen real estate
it seems to use. We looked at KDE 4 on a Lenovo ThinkPad at
1400x1050 pixels, which seemed adequate for the task but by no means
overgenerous. People still using 1024x768 or lower resolutions may
struggle with the defaults.

A new wallpaper set has been collated, with the Oxygen artists acting
as judges to select community submissions. The team chose 15 wallpapers,
and the results are breathtaking. This kind of community involvement is
unquestionably one of the strengths of the open-source development model.

Figure 4. A Small Selection of the KDE 4 Default Wallpapers

Unfortunately, we were unable to preview the Oxygen sound theme
properly—at the time of this writing, KDE 4 had not yet been
released, and something
about our sound card was causing the KDE sound system, Phonon, to crash.

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